Just a few weeks away from the release of its sequel, series co-creator and NetherRealm Studios head Ed Boon has revealed that Mortal Kombat X sold the most out of any other entry in the series. Since its release in 2015, Mortal Kombat X sales have reached about 11 million.
Boon revealed this rough number as a part of a recent interview with Game Informer. In comparison, 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot reportedly sold 5 million units by the time its sequel rolled out in 2015. These numbers mark Mortal Kombat X as one of the biggest selling fighting games of all time. However, it still falls short of Capcom’s Street Fighter 2 and its 25 million sales.
When it was released in 2015, Mortal Kombat X quickly differentiated itself from previous installments with the various changes made to the game. Every character now had three variations, which effectively tripled its already impressive roster of 24 characters. In addition to this, the game also added interactive stages — something first seen in in NetherRealm’s previous game, Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Mortal Kombat XL released in 2016 and was an updated version of the core game. This update came all the characters released as part of the DLC “Kombat Packs.” This included a number of guest characters from various horror movie franchises such as the Xenomorph from the Alien films as well as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th movie series. MKXL eventually came to PC, which fans had repeatedly asked for since the vanilla Mortal Kombat X had stopped receiving character after the first Kombat Pack.
This version also featured a heavily reworked online component. NetherRealm replaced its old variable input delay based network code with a new rollback based code on the GGPO middleware.
The studio’s continued dedication to supporting the game arguably helped Mortal Kombat X reach the sales numbers it did. With this in mind then, the question now is whether the upcoming Mortal Kombat 11 can come close to, let alone surpass the sales of its predecessor.
